‘Excuse me,’ I said to Kraken and the others. I quickly wrapped the half-head of Orpheus in a napkin and made for the stairs.
‘Is everything all right, sir?’ said our waiter as I almost knocked him down.
‘It’s perfectly lodza nurvurli,’ I said, ‘thank you.’
‘I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE!’ shouted the brain of Orpheus.
‘Be quiet!’ I said, ‘I’m getting you out as fast as I can.’
An elderly woman whom I recognized as a dancing girl from an early James Bond film smiled brilliantly at me as I stood aside to let her pass me on the stairs. ‘Talking takeaway?’ she said.
‘It’s my fault for ordering something hemispherical,’ I said, and she nodded sympathetically.
‘EURYDICE!’ shouted the brain, ‘THAT WAS EURYDICE, SHE SMELLED SO GOOD!’
‘That wasn’t Eurydice,’ I said. ‘Please stop embarrassing me.’
‘I WANT TO SMELL HER AGAIN!’ shouted the brain.
‘Thank you,’ I said as someone opened a door for me and someone else opened another door. ‘It’ll be quiet once I get it outside,’ I said.
Once in Greek Street and a little distance from L’Escargot I opened the napkin. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘what’ve you done with the rest of you?’
‘Maybe you’re losing me,’ said the brain of Orpheus.
‘We’ll talk about this when we get home,’ I said, and found that I wasn’t all that keen to get home. I wrapped the brain up again and headed for the Tottenham Court Road tube station. I used the subway on the east side of Charing Cross Road because there are always buskers there and I hadn’t yet seen Gom Yawncher busking.
Sure enough, there he was, playing some cheap little plastic Pan-pipes badly and shuffling about in what I supposed was his idea of pre-classical Greek dance.
I dropped 10 p into his cap. ‘I’m not surprised to see you here,’ I said.
‘Thank you, guv, I’m not surprised to see you either.’
‘Really,’ I said, ‘your eagerness to make an appearance and be noticed however briefly is pathetic. Can it possibly matter that much to you to play these tiny scenes and speak your few little lines?’
He stopped playing and shuffling. ‘It’s like life, isn’t it. Little music in the tunnel, few coins in the cap, here and gone, pfftt. What’s in the napkin?’
‘The brain of Orpheus.’
‘Don’t try to be too colourful,’ he said. ‘Don’t come the eccentric quite so strong. Just be natural and let it happen.’
‘Let’s get something straight,’ I said. I’m not a bit player in your story, you’re a bit player in mine.’
‘Oh yes. Says who?’
‘This is intolerable. I’m writing all this down, you know.”
‘Writing down what we’re saying?’
‘Writing down whatever happens to me.’
‘What for?’
Trying to get my head around it.’
‘Now who’s pathetic?’ He went back to his Pan-pipes and his shuffling.
‘What’s pathetic about trying to understand what happens to you?’
‘It’s cowardly, besides which I don’t believe you. I bet you’re writing it all down trying to make a story out of it, I can tell by the miserable look of you. You’re not really living your life — you’re pulling the legs and the wings off it one by one. Why don’t you take up vagrancy or crime, it’s more manly.’
‘More manly! And I suppose busking is more manly too, is it?’
‘Not half. Here I am for all to see and hear, doing my pitiful little dance and playing my Pan-pipes badly. Poor sod. Give him a bob or two. I am what I am and being it in plain sight, not hiding behind a book or dressing up in clever words. Any further questions?’
‘Not today. Perhaps another time.’
‘As you like, guv. And remember, don’t push it, just let it happen.’
‘You run your show and I’ll run mine,’ I said.
When I got home I opened the napkin and there was the brain of Orpheus, it hadn’t changed back to half a grapefruit. ‘All right,’ I said, ’tell me what’s on your half-mind. Where do we go from here?’
‘Are you speaking to me?’ said the brain.
‘Yes, I’m speaking to you.’
‘Are you sure you can spare the time? You seem to be so terribly busy, you have so many things to do.’
Im not the one who’s playing hard to get,’ I said. ’I haven’t seen you since you were a football.’
’I thought you might want a little time for reflection.’
‘Reflection is what I haven’t got a lot of time for just now. My Classic Comics meal ticket is gone and I’ve got to do something that’ll bring in some money.’
‘Other people’s Orpheus,’ said the brain.
‘I don’t want to do that film,’ I said. ’I’ve already said no to Sol Mazzaroth and his four thousand pounds but it’s twice as hard to say no to eight thousand pounds and there’s nothing else on the horizon.’
‘Is that the story of you then?’
‘I hope not. Tell me what happened with you and Eurydice.’
‘We are not a whole story, Eurydice and I; we are only fragments of story, and all around us is unknowing.’
When the brain said that I remembered a flight to Zurich, seeing from high in the air the black peaks of the Alps rising from a milky ocean of cloud.
‘That’s how it is with the story of us,’ said the brain, ’black peaks rising from a white obscurity. There are certain patterns, certain arrangements of energy from which events and probabilities emerge but I know nothing for certain. Do you remember Aristaeus?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘He watched with wide eyes when I killed the tortoise and dug it out of the shell. He asked my name and he insisted that I was a story. I remember how he wrote my name in the air. I think I see him scratching words on potsherds. I wish I hadn’t told him my name. He kept bees, Eurydice kept bees. I think she learned bee-keeping from Aristaeus.’
‘Were they lovers before she met you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the brain. ’I’ve told you there isn’t a whole story. I don’t know what’s between them in that space between the making of the lyre and my finding of Eurydice by the river. I think of the buzzingness, the swarmingness, the manyness of bees singing the honey of possibility. I see Eurydice sitting among the skeps under the apple trees listening to her bees. She was afraid that our story would find us but she was always listening for it.’
‘How can bees tell a story?’
‘The bees don’t tell a story but in the manyness of their singing there sometimes comes a story to the one who listens.’
‘The story that Aristaeus was scratching on potsherds?’
‘Broken pieces want to come together,’ said the brain, ‘they want to contain something. I see Aristaeus with his broken bits of fired clay, each one only big enough for a word or two. ORPHEUS, he has written on one piece, THE TORTOISE on another. As soon as these words are put next to each other there want to be more words: THE ROAD; THE RIVER; EURYDICE. Or perhaps EURYDICE is the first word and in the empty space next to it there appears THE TORTOISE. Or first THE TORTOISE, yes of course, THE TORTOISE first because it is the centre of the universe, because it is the world-child; THE TORTOISE first and then EURYDICE who is again the world-child-tortoise, EURYDICE whose loss is the judgment, whose loss is the reckoning and the punishment.
‘The judgment, the reckoning, and the punishment.’
‘Yes,’ said the brain. ‘Eurydice is all that one wants to be faithful to and cannot, and the loss of her is the punishment.’
‘How did you lose her?’
‘I lost her when I stopped perceiving her.’